Finding Our Way
by 8ounce
Summary: How do we stop ourselves from falling out of love? One-shot. Drop me a review; I love em. Especially since I'm trying out a new writing style.


I should start out by saying that we were the perfect couple. Jade and I, I mean. Well, maybe I should start out by saying that I'm Tori Vega. And once upon a time I thought fell out of love with Jade West. We were drifting apart. I remember thinking there was a time when I couldn't imagine being apart from her. Spent every minute together, inseparable. Somewhere along the way things started going wrong. Little things, like the way she stopped opening doors for me, or how we stopped going on dates. I don't want to sound like I'm blaming her. There's things about me that definitely contributed. I forgot her birthday one year. Neglected to go to a concert she was singing at in favour of hanging out with some friends. And the fights. Those were the worst. I'd never yelled at someone like I'd yelled at her before. Some days it almost felt like everything she did grated across my skin. And everything she said just pissed me off a little more. Until I couldn't take it anymore, and we'd start shouting at each other. It's not like I didn't kick myself. I just didn't know how to fix it. I take it back. Not knowing how to fix it was the worst part.

* * *

><p>"Hey, babe." She just sauntered into the apartment, and collapsed on the couch without even looking at me. I leaned my hands against the counter, taking a deep breath. No need to pick a fight over something this small. But maybe it's time to have this conversation. No time like the present, right? So I walk over, and sit next to her, out of her reach so she can't touch me.<p>

"Babe?" I don't know how to start this conversation. The fuck am I supposed to say? We should take a break? That's new. She hasn't even looked at me yet. Her eyes are glued onto the TV.

"What?"

"Jade." My voice is even, calm. I'm surprised, considering the brew of emotions that feels like it's churning in my stomach. Finally she looks up. Sits up.

"Something wrong?" She has the decency to look concerned, at least.

"We need to…talk about something." Something about my voice sounds different to me. Raw, almost. I'm not going to cry.

"What's up?" She hears the change in my voice too.

"I just…" I don't know how to say it. In the vast vocabulary of the English language, there isn't some combination of words to explain this? I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Do you even love me, Jade?" There. That's it. The reality of it is, I don't know. I don't know if she loves me anymore. Hell, I don't even know if I love _her_ anymore. She sits up a little straighter, and I can almost hear her thinking. 4 years and I can read her like a book. I can tell she's been completely blindsided and it hurts. It hurts me that I pulled this conversation out of nowhere. There's silence as she thinks. "Look, Jade, we don't have to talk about this now –"

"—no, let's talk about it." She interrupts me. "I mean, we should talk about it if it's bothering you." She rubs her forehead, frowning. "I do love you, Tori. I don't really know where this is coming from though."

"I just…everything seems…learned." I struggle to put the feeling in my body into words. She stills, looking intently into my eyes. I turn away. She knows me far too well, and I'm too involved with her to hide what I'm feeling from her. The silence is all around, resting on me like damp cotton. Suffocating.

"Is this about the guy? I said I was sorry about that. We were shooting a short film." Jade tries to peer into my eyes. I shake my head.

"It's not about him. It's about…the fact that we're…" I stop, closing my eyes for a minute. Not going to cry. "We fight. A lot more than we used to. We can barely be in a room for five minutes before we start yelling at each other. And it's not you. I feel like I lose my temper at the slightest things. And it's scaring me." I pause, taking a deep breath to calm myself. "I've been having nightmares, where I die and you move on without me. And I just…don't know what to do. Are we falling out of love?" I curse myself for the stupid, vulnerable little question at the end. I wrap my arms around myself unconsciously. My words left a weird, shocked kind of silence. She looked shocked too, like I had just told her I was leaving her.

"So I guess you have a solution?" She finally asked expectantly. I shook my head. "So, what do we do?" I looked away. We were at an impasse. Suddenly, her hands found mine. Silently, she rubbed her thumbs slowly over the tops of my fingers. I looked her, blinking confusedly. She continued to hold my hands, intertwining our fingers gently. After a bit, she cleared her throat. "I don't want us to be apart." She murmured, staring at our hands. I sat helplessly, thoughts and feelings meshing until I couldn't tell them apart. "I can't imagine us apart." She spoke softly. "But if you feel like we should take a break, then let's do it."

* * *

><p>And that's how I ended up sleeping by myself the next couple of weeks. Not that I slept much. As much as I knew it was necessary for us to spend some time apart, I missed her. There's something about my relationship with Jade that just seems to feel different than any relationship I've had before. It's an intangible sort of thing. It had been a month since we had that conversation, and I knew it was going to go on unless I ended it. Because this break was what I wanted. What made absolutely no sense to me was why I felt so…hollow. I wanted the break. And I knew Jade wasn't going to do anything without my say-so. So why did I wish she would knock on the door and ask me to end it? What I didn't know at the time was that she was thinking about the exact things I was. I'd underestimated my girlfriend. I guess at the time I'd been expecting radio silence from her, what I didn't expect was a text from her saying she was picking me up on Friday at eight.<p>

* * *

><p>"What's going on?" I asked, as she handed me into her car, shutting the door firmly.<p>

"It's a date." She said simply, starting the engine.

"I'm a little underdressed for one of your dates." I was wearing jeans and a thin hoodie. Jade's dates usually involved wine and expensive entrees. She chuckled briefly, keeping her eyes on the road.

"Nah." I reached for her hand, but she shook her head. "No, I'm playing by repeat-first-date rules. No hand-holding until the third date and no kissing until the end of the date." She grinned, but I felt a strange tug in my heart. I wondered briefly if she was ignoring the problems we were having, blindsiding me with dates and thoughtful gestures. I blinked and pushed the thoughts from my mind as we pulled up to the movie theatre. She ran to open the car door for me, handing me out of the car. "Wait here, I'm going to get tickets." She was back in a flash, tucking the tickets into her back pocket.

"Am I allowed to know what we're watching…?" I asked, my voice trailing off.

"Nope." She handed the tickets to the attendant, who handed Jade the stubs, the latter which carefully placed the stubs in her pocket. As the movie started, I realized why I wasn't allowed to see the tickets.

"You remembered?" I didn't expect her to. I'd expected her to put the fight out of her mind as soon as possible. Last month, I'd asked her to watch _The Fault in Our Stars_ with me, and an argument had ensued as to how I had a horrible taste in movies. I was touched she'd taken the time to think through our arguments.

* * *

><p>And that's how the rest of our dates went. Jade took me to places I wanted to go but we hadn't been before, whether because she didn't want to go or because we didn't have time. No matter how many dates we went on, though, I couldn't shake the nagging, tugging feeling that Jade was using this as a way to distract me from what was actually going on, the way to actually fix the problem. After the sixth date, I needed to know.<p>

* * *

><p>"What are we doing, here, Jade?" We had just settled down on the couch in front of the TV after she had made me a wonderful dinner. (She's a fantastic cook; she just doesn't want anybody to know about it.) I could feel her stiffen; I was pressed to her side. The arm was removed, and immediately I regretted asking the question. I turned to face her. "I feel like we're just avoiding the problem." I decided to spell everything I was feeling out for her. It's not like I had anything to lose anyway. She sighed, and pushed a hand carelessly through her hair. She rubbed her face with a hand and then spoke.<p>

"Look. I'm going to be completely honest with you, because that seems to be what you want." She hesitated, before forging on. "I love you. And the couple of weeks I had to crash at Cat's was horrible. To be completely honest I couldn't do another day of the stupid break, so I had to do something. And this seemed like a good idea, at the time." She sighed, and I could tell she was frustrated. She didn't know what to do. And she was wondering if she was wasting her time. There was a newfound vulnerability in her eyes, and I felt a pang of pain in my chest. "So tell me what you need from me, Tori. Just tell me. Cause I'll do it. You know I'll do it. But I won't beg. Tell me what you want, and I'll do it." It was the reassurance that the six dates she took me on weren't a stupid consolation. A pretty pendant to keep the emotional, crazy girlfriend happy for the time being. Weirdly, our roles were reversed. I was the one reaching for her hand, the one who was intertwining our fingers.

"Just talk to me, Jade." I could hear my voice come out in a soft murmur. "I want to know why we fight. I want to know why you look so _unhappy_ sometimes. I want to know why sometimes I wake up in the morning and you're already gone. I want to _know_ you, Jade. I want you to know that I love you, despite everything you think is horrible about yourself. And I want _you_." I met her eyes, framing her face gently with my hands, tracing her cheeks with my thumbs. Meeting her lips with mine. The giddiness bubbled inside me as we broke apart. I giggled. I couldn't help it.

"Gawd, I've missed that sound." She muttered, wrapping her arms around me. Her lips grazed my temple, my forehead, my nose. Over and over again. And the smile that broke across my face was true. Not the one I forced onto my face to greet her when she came home.

* * *

><p>Don't get me wrong, we still have out problems. We're definitely still working on the talking part, especially Jade. <em>This is Jade. I heard that. I'm <em>not_ having problems talking about my feelings._ She hijacks my musings. _Musings is such a lame word. You would._ I still have to kiss her to make her go away._ Not going away._ But we're better. We definitely have more fun. And we're more spontaneous. Because I think we remember the pain. And we remember the loneliness and being apart. And most of all I think we remember the fighting. We're still not the perfect couple everybody thinks we are. We still don't have the solutions to fix everything. But, as a wise man once said, "we don't have the answers. We just have to live with the questions, and find our way." _Babe, that's Richard Castle._ He's a wise man. Point is, couple of years after the break, we're still doing fine. Working out way with through the questions, and finding our way.

* * *

><p>"Babe." The lights were out, and my back was pressed against her front, her arm resting protectively on my waist.<p>

"Hm?" I responded drowsily, turning my head a little.

"Why'd you write down it all down?" Her hand traced patterns soothingly across my stomach. I shrugged.

"I guess I just want people to know that, sometimes, relationships don't have to end cause you disagree on something. If you truly love someone, and they truly love you, you'll find a way to meet in the middle." I sighed, eyelids fluttering closed sleepily.

"I love you." She whispered, as her lips found my neck. I hummed appreciatively, before shifting sleepily.

"Love you too."


End file.
